Tag: populism

Two strands of populism have long thrived in American politics, both purporting to champion the interests of ordinary people. One shoots upward, at nefarious elites; the other—Trump’s tradition—shoots both up and down, targeting outsiders at the bottom of the ladder as well.

The title was a little link-baitish, but overall, this is an excellent history of the populism movement in America. Recommend.

🔖 I’ll have to get a copy of Gest’s work to read now that I’ve seen two references to it in two different articles.

My Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Two different, often competing populist traditions have long thrived in the United States. Pundits often speak of “left-wing” and “right-wing” populists. But those labels don’t capture the most meaningful distinction. The first type of American populist directs his or her ire exclusively upward: at corporate elites and their enablers in government who have allegedly betrayed the interests of the men and women who do the nation’s essential work. These populists embrace a conception of “the people” based on class and avoid identifying themselves as supporters or opponents of any particular ethnic group or religion. They belong to a broadly liberal current in American political life; they advance a version of “civic nationalism,” which the historian Gary Gerstle defines as the “belief in the fundamental equality of all human beings, in every individual’s inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and in a democratic government that derives its legitimacy from the people’s consent.”

Although Trump’s rise has demonstrated the enduring appeal of the racial-nationalist strain of American populism, his campaign is missing one crucial element. It lacks a relatively coherent, emotionally rousing description of “the people” whom Trump claims to represent.

By invoking identities that voters embraced—“producers,” “white laborers,” “Christian Americans,” or President Richard Nixon’s “silent majority”—populists roused them to vote for their party and not merely against the alternatives on offer.

For much of his campaign, his slogan might as well have been “Make America Hate Again.”

According to a recent study by the political scientist Justin Gest, 65 percent of white Americans—about two-fifths of the population—would be open to voting for a party that stood for “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam.”

This is the second article in the same issue of Foreign Affairs that’s quoting this same statistic from the same paper. [1] [2]

Donald Trump’s candidacy is part of a broad populist upsurge throughout the Western world. Economic stasis and rapid cultural change have provoked a backlash across Europe and North America, and enlightened leadership will be needed to respond to legitimate grievances without pandering to the public’s worst instincts.

This is one of the most sane analyses I’ve seen in a while about what is happening in the world. I recommend it highly.

My Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Trump’s political genius was to realize that many Republican voters were unmoved by the standard party gospel of free trade, low taxes, deregulation, and entitlement reform but would respond well to a different appeal based on cultural fears and nationalist sentiment.

The number of immigrants entering many European countries is historically high. In the United States, the proportion of Americans who were foreign-born increased from less than five percent in 1970 to almost 14 percent today. And the problem of illegal immigration to the United States remains real, even though it has slowed recently. In many countries, the systems designed to manage immigration and provide services for integrating immigrants have broken down. And yet all too often, governments have refused to fix them, whether because powerful economic interests benefit from cheap labor or because officials fear appearing uncaring or xenophobic.

For the vast majority of human history, people lived, traveled, worked, and died within a few miles of their birthplace. In recent decades, however, Western societies have seen large influxes of people from different lands and alien cultures.

There is a reality behind the rhetoric, for we are indeed living in an age of mass migration. The world has been transformed by the globalization of goods, services, and information, all of which have produced their share of pain and rejection. But we are now witnessing the globalization of people, and public reaction to that is stronger, more visceral, and more emotional.

Voting patterns traditionally reinforced this ideological divide, with the working class opting for the left and middle and upper classes for the right. Income was usually the best predictor of a person’s political choices.

The most striking findings of the paper are about the decline of economics as the pivot of politics.

The shift began, as Inglehart and Norris note, in the 1970s, when young people embraced a postmaterialist politics centered on self-expression and issues related to gender, race, and the environment. They challenged authority and established institutions and norms, and they were largely successful in introducing new ideas and recasting politics and society. But they also produced a counterreaction. The older generation, particularly men, was traumatized by what it saw as an assault on the civilization and values it cherished and had grown up with. These people began to vote for parties and candidates that they believed would, above all, hold at bay these forces of cultural and social change.

This convergence in economic policy has contributed to a situation in which the crucial difference between the left and the right today is cultural.

The most widely held job for an American male today is driving a car, bus, or truck, as The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson has noted.

That slower growth is coupled with challenges that relate to the new global economy. Globalization is now pervasive and entrenched, and the markets of the West are (broadly speaking) the most open in the world. Goods can easily be manufactured in lower-wage economies and shipped to advanced industrial ones. While the effect of increased global trade is positive for economies as a whole, specific sectors get battered, and large swaths of unskilled and semiskilled workers find themselves unemployed or underemployed.

Today, an American’s economic status is a bad predictor of his or her voting preferences. His or her views on social issues—say, same-sex marriage—are a much more accurate guide to whether he or she will support Republicans or Democrats.

Fareed Zakaria shares some excellent insight on world affairs, particularly as it relates to the growth of populism in the West. His arguments are underlined by Viet Thanh Nguyen who talks about his experiences as a Vietnamese-American while discussing his 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer on Charlie Rose.

Fareed Zakaria may be one of my favorite guests on Charlie Rose. Their discussions are fantastic.

In this particular installment, Zakaria has some razor sharp analysis on world events. In particular he takes a look at the growing trend of populism and anti-immigration which is occurring in the world. He briefly dissects it and posits that while there are many variables potentially at play, the countries that are most effected have only one in common: migration and immigration.

While many politicians, pundits, and others indicate that the problem is economics (Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have excellent economies yet face growing populism), loss of manufacturing (Germany has a robust manufacturing sector), or even governments abandoning their workers (France goes to great length to protect its workers), none of these variables is common to all of the Western countries. Yet Japan has many of these same issues (and in particular a very poor economy for almost 20 years), but it isn’t suffering a populist movement because it isn’t dealing with the one issue that confronts all of the others: migration and immigration.

Zakaria’s argument is underlined by Rose’s final guest Viet Thanh Nguyen, who discusses his debut novel, The Sympathizer, [2] which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At the end of the interview, Rose asks (almost as a complete afterthought) Nguyen about his experiences with immigration with respect to the Vietnamese in America. Nguyen indicates that the United States had similar painful immigration issues and distaste for the Vietnamese moving into America in the 1970s and early 1980s, yet 40 years on, no one seems to be as up-in-arms and these immigrants have not only assimilated well, but are generally doing very well in American society and culture.